Harvest Moon: A Dead Man's Request
by Bandit-Rahl
Summary: Another take of mine on HM64. 27 year old Jack and his daughter move to Flowerbud Village after his grandfather dies, needing a place where he can start from scratch, and leave the pain of his old life behind. Jack's Grandfather made a last request: bri
1. Chapter 1

I figured I should take this opportunity to explain a few things. In my other Harvest Moon 64 story, Jack moves into a large house on the farm. That holds true for this story as well. Some people contacted me to contest that, so I'll explain my reasoning to you. I wanted my stories to be at least somewhat realistic. If you think about it, an old man who was living on a farm most likely had said farm for a long time. Logically, one could assume that he raised his children on that farm. Ergo, he wouldn't be having a small, one room house. He would have something larger, something that would accommodate the size of his family.

That being said, I'll tell you a little bit about this story. As with my other one, this is a Jack/Karen fic. But once again, I changed the ages of the characters so that they were older yet than my other story. My other work of fiction also felt a little too bright to be about Karen, seeing as how quiet, reserved, and anger prone she is. That fueled my desire for this fic.

Now that my episode of self-justification has been finished, please don't refrain from telling me exactly what you think of my stories. I would simply ask that if you are going to criticize or praise the work of fiction, to please provide examples from what has been written so that I know what needs to be worked on and what I'm doing well.

Thank you.

And I don't own Harvest Moon. Natsume does. I simply buy their games.

Grandpa was dead.

Standing at the bow of the ferry to Flowerbud Village, I could hardly believe it. It seemed as though Death was now stalking my bloodline. My wife had died three years before Grandpa, while giving birth to our daughter. My mother had died a year or so before that, and now my other grandfather up in Sugar Village was sick. Add it all together, and I was pretty depressed most of the time.

"Why are you going to Flowerbud?" A man about my age came up next to me and leaned on the railing.

"Funeral," I answered shortly; I held out my hand. "I'm Jack."

The man returned the handshake, the wind blowing his brown hair around. "Name's Cliff," he answered. "I'm a drifter, but I have a couple of places that I go to make the rounds. That there's my mate, Cain," he finished, pointing at a speck in the air.

He saw the confusion on my face, so he whistled. The little brown speck started dropping towards us, falling like a rock, until the hawk spread its wings and _whooshed_ to a perch on the railing. "We go everywhere together," Cliff continued. "Other than Ann, he's been my only real friend."

I smirked. "So you're heading to Flowerbud Village for a girl."

Cain took off, and Cliff and I headed inside to talk. It had been at least sixteen years since I had last been to Flowerbud, so I used his memory to help me remember where everything was. I couldn't remember much of anything about the time I had spent there with Grandpa, so talking to Cliff was a real help. In exchange for telling me where all of the shops were, Cliff regaled me with tales about a redheaded young woman named Ann.

Talking to Cliff helped pass the time, and it took my mind off of Grandpa's funeral. He let me know that he would be staying up on Moon Mountain with the carpenters, and said that I could probably stay there too if I needed a place to sleep.

When we got off of the ferry in the late morning sunshine, there was a group of people waiting. Off to one side of the dock was a short, portly old man who I knew was the mayor. The other group consisted of a redheaded woman wearing coveralls, a brunette woman wearing jeans and a purple vest, and a short bald man.

Cliff and I shook hands again, and separated to head for our greeting parties. The girls started shrieking when they saw Cliff, and swarmed him with hugs. I hooked my duffel bag over my shoulder and headed for the mayor.

"I am so sorry you had to visit under these circumstances," Mayor Thomas told me quietly, shaking my hand. "Why don't we head to your grandfather's house? The funeral isn't for another couple of hours, but there's some things we need to talk about."

We started walking up the path away from the beach, listening to the little party going on behind us. "I was sorry to hear about your wife, John," Thomas ventured. "I know your grandfather was pretty torn up by it when he went to the funeral. If you don't mind my asking, why did you not bring your daughter with you?"

The path took a turn to the right, and we passed the sign saying "Greene Ranch" as we continued on. "Kairi never met Grandpa," I explained after a moment. "I don't want her only memory of him being a pale, old man in a coffin. It would be better for her to not remember him at all."

Silence followed us the rest of the way until we reached the sign saying "Kiefu Farm." The Mayor started walking straight down the path without pausing. I took a deep breath then followed him.

The fields were definitely a mess. They were much smaller than I remembered, but they were covered in stones, boulders, and trees. The barn and chicken coop looked to be in good shape, as did the tool shed and the horse's stall. Grandpa had improved on the house, too, since I had been here last at the age of ten.

It was no longer a single room shack. Now, I could see from the outside, the house looked at least four times larger than it had when I was here as a kid. The Mayor unlocked the front door and waved me inside.

The front door opened up into a spacious living room, complete with a sofa, recliner, and entertainment center. Along the back wall, there was a stairway to the roof. To the left of the door, I could see the kitchen, dining room, and bathroom; to the right, there was a hallway leading to the house's three bedrooms.

Thomas walked over to the TV, and turned it and the VCR on. He waved me to the couch. "I want you to watch your grandfather's video will," he told me. "I've seen it and so has your father, since he helped prepare it." He hit the "Play" button.

The screen was fuzz for a minute, and then my grandfather was sitting there in his recliner and looking no older than when I had last seen him at my wife's funeral. "Well, John," he began, "if you're seeing this then I've kicked the bucket. In light of that, my boy, I have some requests to make as I pass on my property.

"I know from talking to you that you need and want a place to start your life over. Here it is. I am giving to you, my grandson John, all of my property and holdings in Flowerbud Village so that you can do what you need to do with your life." Grandpa paused and then went on. "There is a condition, however. You have two years to make the farm prosperous again. At the end of the two years, your father will come here and evaluate how well you've done in making this a home for you. Of course, you don't have to do this. Your father can just sell the farm now, but he gets to keep the money if you fail."

Grandpa seemed to look straight into my eyes from the television set. "Please don't let me down, John," he finished quietly. "This farm has been in our family for six generations. Don't let us lose some of our history."

I stared at the TV for a moment, silent. It was still incredibly depressing that Grandpa was dead, but I marveled at this last gift of his. He had hit the nail on the head, I knew. I did need somewhere that Kairi and I could go where we could start over, start from scratch. It would be pretty simple to start, too. All I would have to do is call the office and tell them I wasn't coming back, and then give them the address to mail my last check to.

The TV started to hiss, and the mayor was just turning his head to look at me. "I'll do it," I answered before he could ask. I shrugged. "Grandpa was right, I need to start over."

Thomas stood up. "The master bedroom is the last door on the right," he told me, indicating the hallway that the bedroom doors came off of. "The funeral is going to start in two hours, so you might want to start getting ready." He let himself out the door, leaving me alone.

The funeral itself was a short, quiet affair. Everyone in the town had turned out for it, all dressed in mourning black clothes. I stood in the back of the church with Cliff standing next to me; I may have just met him, but he was the best friend I had in the village. There was no open casket, but the coffin was sitting out in front of everyone on an altar. After the service, Cliff, Harris the mailman, and Hal from Greene Ranch helped me carry the casket out to the graveyard, where it was lowered. Most of the villagers went from there to a wake that was being held in the town square, but I headed back to the farm.

Knowing that I needed to do something to get my mind off of my grief, I decided to look through the tool shed. Hanging on racks on one side, I could see a hoe, a sickle, a shovel, a sledgehammer, an assortment of construction tools, and a watering can. On the shelves along the other wall there were a number of empty seed bins labeled with vegetable names; I could see a couple of bags in the potato and turnip bins. There was a wheelbarrow leaning on the back wall.

Pulling the sledgehammer off of the wall, I tested its weight. The job I was now leaving was in construction, so I was well familiar with the tools associated with manual labor. Looking at my watch told me that it was only four o'clock.

I hurried into the house to change into some work clothes, and then ran back outside to collect the wheelbarrow, shovel, and sledgehammer. My thought was to crush the smaller rocks with the sledgehammer and turn them into gravel, which would then get poured on the walkways up to the house and barn.

It only took fifteen minutes of rock crushing before I had to strip my shirt off because I was so hot. The feel of the breeze blowing across the sweat covering my chest immediately energized me and took my mind off of the funeral. I had been working for nearly an hour when Cliff came walking up the path.

"So, the rumors are true?" he asked, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

I pulled a pack of cigarettes out of one of my pockets and lit one; Cliff shook his head when I offered one to him. "What rumors?" I asked, leaning the sledgehammer against the wheelbarrow and taking a breather.

"The people in the town are saying that you're going to take over your grandfather's farm."

After blowing a cloud of smoke up into the air and watching it for a few silent moments, I nodded. "Yeah. I am."

Cliff stood next to me in silence. "Do you think you would be interested in some hired help?" he asked cautiously.

I pulled my gaze down from the darkening sky and arched an eyebrow at him. "I thought you were a drifter?"

He actually turned red. "Well. . . . I really like Ann, so I thought that maybe if I could work here, then I could stay around long enough to know if things will work out."

I shrugged and took another drag off of my cigarette. "I won't be able to pay you for a while, not until the farm starts producing, but if you're up for it then let's do it. Go grab your stuff. You can take the bedroom closest to the living room."

His face brightened up immediately, and he started shaking my hand violently before running back towards town. He disappeared around a bend in the trail, and then almost immediately reappeared with his travel bag in hand. I breathed in one last lungful of smoke before grinding the cigarette butt into the ground and getting back to work.

"Wow," was all Cliff said when I told him what I was doing. He shook his head. "That's a little more than I can do," he admitted. "I think I'll have to stick with weeding. Do you want me to start on it tonight?"

"If you could," I nodded. "There are a handful of bags of potato and turnip seeds in the shed, so if we could get some of those planted we can be on our way to earning money."

Cliff went inside to throw his stuff in his room and change, and was back out in the fields five minutes later, pulling weeds and throwing them into piles while I continued making gravel. We called it quits at seven-thirty, and stepped back to check our handiwork. Almost impossibly, we had managed to plant the turnip and potato seeds.

All in all, we had done a lot. We had cleared enough room to be able to plant and move around ten bags of seeds worth of crops. The two of us were starting to feel pretty good about how soon we were going to be making some money. I took my shower first, and then sat down to call my father.

Not surprisingly, he already knew that I had accepted Grandpa's challenge. He agreed to pack up the little important things I had lying around my apartment in the city and said he'd pack up all of Kairi's toys and that they'd arrive the next afternoon, as well as bring me the equivalent amount of local currency that my final paycheck would amount to.

After Dad hung the phone up, I laid down in bed. There was a lot to get done tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

Cliff and I started working right after breakfast, at about a quarter to six, and started up right where we left off: pulling weeds and breaking up the rocks. By ten o'clock, both of us were shirtless; I sent Cliff into town to buy some more turnip and potato seeds. At about twelve-thirty, the redheaded woman showed up with a picnic basket, waving. Cliff waved back and tossed down the hoe.

"Ann?" I asked. He just grinned at me.

She skipped up to us with more enthusiasm than I think I've ever been able to muster. After looking at us half-naked men for a few moments, she held out the basket. "I brought food!" she announced.

We all moved up to the porch to sit under some shade while we ate the sandwiches and rice balls that Ann had brought. She listened to Cliff talk about my plans for the farm, before finally interrupting. "Do you want a horse, Jack?"

The question came completely out of the blue, and caught me by surprise. "A horse?" I asked, my mind bringing up images of all the things a horse could help me do on the farm. "I can't afford to buy one."

Ann popped the last piece of a rice ball into her mouth. "You wouldn't need to pay for it," she told me. "We have a colt that was born a couple of seasons ago, but we don't have any room for it on the ranch anymore. Dad wanted me to offer it to you."

I shrugged. "Sure," I answered around a mouthful of food. A glance at my watch told me that it was almost one-thirty. "Come on, Cliff. I'll help weed, and we'll get those potato and turnip seeds planted before we quit at four."

Cliff's love interest sat on the porch watching us work for a while, but eventually offered to lend a hand. Between the three of us, we managed to plant and water the handful of bags of potato and turnip seeds that Cliff had bought earlier in the morning; we finished with the days chores at just after four o'clock. We hurried to put the tools away, and I rushed through my shower so that I could be at the dock when the ferry arrived at four forty-five with my father and daughter.

When I started heading down to the beach, I was a little early. The ferry was still a barely recognizable dot on the horizon. I started looking around while I waited and smoked, and noticed a young woman sitting with her back up against the cliff at the rear of the beach. After thinking for a moment, I recognized her as one of the women who had greeted Cliff when we had arrived the day before.

Her brunette hair was long enough that it fell to just below her shoulders, but the hair framing her face was a shocking white color. She was wearing blue jeans and sneakers and, although she was hugging her knees to her chest, I could see that she was wearing a white blouse underneath her purple vest. From where I was standing, she looked rather sad. As I watched her in silence for a handful of minutes, I lit myself a cigarette.

I noticed the ferry pulling up to the dock, and headed over towards it, passing the brunette woman. "Who are you?" she demanded, her rich voice laced with emotions. "I don't recognize you."

"I'm Jack, I'm—"

"So you're the guy taking over the farm," she cut me off sharply. "Well, you won't be here long. No one ever is."

"I-"

She got up abruptly as the ferry pulled up to the dock and began walking towards the other end of the beach. "Leave me alone. Don't talk to me so much."

Left standing there with a confused frown, I couldn't help but chuckle. This woman, it seemed, was in about as good of a mood as I usually was. I found myself wondering what was wrong with her when my attention was pulled away by a _clomp_ing sound. I finished my cigarette and put it out before I turned around.

"Daddy!" Kairi shrieked as she ran/stomped down the length of the dock. As I swept my daughter up in my arms, I could see the woman at the other end of the beach turn around to look at us.

I planted a kiss on my dark-haired daughter's head. "Hello, baby," I said, holding her close. Ever since my wife, Erin, had died I could hardly stand to be without Kairi. That feeling had been almost as strong as my grief ever since I had heard about Grandpa's death and left home.

A high pitched bark pulled my attention away from my daughter to the animal on the leash that my father was holding. There was my floppy eared pet and companion: my dog Spatz, with his tongue hanging out. Spatz held a special place in my heart, having been bought and named by my late wife when she gave him to me as a birthday gift.

My father was a lawyer in his late forties, and considerably shorter than I was. His brown hair was thinning, and he peered at everything through a pair of thick black glasses. He wore his typical business suit: a drab brown colored blazer and slacks. Behind him, a couple of sailors from the ferry were carrying boxes and suitcases.

"How long are you here for?" I asked my father.

"Just long enough to take a quick look at the farm, and visit Dad's grave," he answered. "The ferry is going to wait for me, and take me home when I'm done."

I hiked Kairi up onto my shoulders and led the way back to the farm. Dad paid close attention to the amount of work that had been accomplished, and to the general look and layout of the land. When he was finished looking around, he handed me a bag full of coins, saying that it was the sum of my final paycheck. With that he shook my hand, telling me that he was going to visit Grandpa and leave, and that he would be back in two years.

I took Kairi into the house and introduced her to Cliff, and started to bring in the handful of boxes and two suitcases. By this time it was almost eight o'clock, so I unpacked Kairi's stuff and made up her bed in the third bedroom so that she could go to sleep. She fell asleep at the end of a short bedtime story, and I started unpacking everything else. While I was pawing through the boxes of stuff that my father had packed up for me, I was surprised to find that he had bought two cartons of cigarettes for me that he had then packed in with the rest of my belongings.

Cliff offered to lend a hand, and started standing framed photos up on the fireplace's mantle while I started hanging some pictures on the wall. "Who's the woman standing next to you in these pictures?" he asked, standing back to look at the row of photos he had put up.

"My wife," I answered, not pausing in what I was doing. I picked up that last picture frame from inside the box in front of me and noticed a small photo that had been stuck on the back of the frame. Looking up at me from the photo was a couple of kids.

That is essentially what we were when we started dating, Erin and I: kids. I stared in silence at the photo, drinking in the details of her dark brown hair and blue eyes that seemed to shine with an inner light. The picture had been taken in a photo booth, and I found myself remembering when we had taken it. We had been on our first real date, and for a split second, I could feel her arms around my neck just like they had been in the photo. I tucked the picture into the breast pocket of my shirt, and turned my attention back to hanging the framed photo I had pulled out of the box.

Cliff started to sound embarrassed. "If I'd known you were going to have a wife and a kid moving in here with you, I wouldn't have asked to stay here."

Now I stopped hanging pictures. "The wife isn't coming."

I could feel him looking at me intently, but I didn't meet his eyes as I moved over to start piling books on the bookshelf. "Divorced?" he asked.

"No."

For a couple of minutes, the house was so quiet that I could have heard a dust bunny hit the floor. "I'm sorry," Cliff ventured eventually. "I sort of know how it feels, since my parents and sister died, so if you want to talk sometime just let me know."

"What happened?" I asked quickly, glad to get the subject changed to something other than Erin.

"It happened about ten years ago, so about the time I turned seventeen. A typhoon had hit Mineral Town, and I went out in it to try to get some firewood out of the shed. While I was outside a lightning bolt hit the house, and it lit up like dry cedar shavings," he explained. "I tried to get in, but it was too hot. So, I ran to get help. By the time I could get anyone out of their house to help me, our house had nearly burnt to the ground."

"I'm sorry," I told him quietly. I looked up to see him staring at me expectantly. "I married Erin five years ago, just after the two of us turned twenty-one. A year after we got married, she found out she was pregnant. Nine months after that, she died in the delivery room."

We were both quiet for another couple of minutes. "Well," Cliff spoke up, "you're only what . . . 26? I know you've probably heard it before, but you'll find someone else."

"It'll just take time," we finished together. I laughed sardonically. All of a sudden, I felt like I really needed a drink. "You're right. I've heard it too often to count. Grandpa was still saying it just six months ago when he was telling me that there was a woman here I'd get along with."

That's the point at which someone knocked on the door, startling both of us. "That should be Ann," Cliff told me. "I forgot to warn you: we were going to do some stargazing here on the farm tonight."

"If you're going to stay here, do you think you can keep an eye on Kairi?" I asked. "I'm going to hit the bar."

Cliff nodded as he pulled the door open to reveal an impatient Ann. "Sure. Do you know where it's at?"

I thought for a moment. "No."

Ann had come into the middle of the conversation, but it seemed as though she heard enough through the door to be able to help. "I can show you there then come back here to hang out with Cliff," she offered. "Just let me warm up my hands."

I grabbed my jacket off of the back of a chair and stepped towards the door. "Go ahead. Just come on outside when you're ready."

As soon as my feet hit the new gravel in the walkway, I was pulling a pack of cigarettes out of one of my pockets and lighting one. By the time Ann came through the door, I was stubbing that cigarette out on the lid of the trashcan next to the mailbox and throwing the butt in the garbage. She gave me a disapproving frown, so I frowned back at her; this caused her to laugh. "You know, you would probably get along pretty well with a friend of mine."

"I'm just looking forward to getting along with a glass of whiskey," I returned, lighting up another smoke and following her down the path to town.

We walked in silence until we reached the edges of Flowerbud Village. "You have a very pretty little girl," Ann quietly complimented me.

"Thanks."

"I hope one day I can have a kid too," she continued. "Where's her mother?" I didn't say anything; instead, I focused on my cigarette. Ann was obviously confused about my reaction, but thankfully didn't push the subject.

We stopped in front of a building with a sign that said "Duke's Bar." Ann waved at the door. "Here you go. I'm gonna head back to Cliff. Can you make it back on your own?"

I waved my hand at her. "Yeah." As soon as she left, I threw my cigarette butt on the ground and put it out with my heel. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the double doors open.

The bar was nearly empty. At one table, there was a giant man staring into a glass of wine; at another table I could see Hal from Greene Ranch sitting with his son, Gray, and at a third table I could see Harris—the mailman/constable—sitting with a young, dark skinned man wearing a purple bandana. I opted to sit at one of the empty tables, and dropped into a chair.

"What do you want?"

I recognized the voice, and looked up to see the young woman I had met earlier on the beach. "Fix me up with a glass of whiskey," I told her.

"That'll be six hundred gold," she warned me, her tone only slightly warmer than ice.

"I want one anyways." She turned to leave, and I found myself watching her as she walked away. This young woman was definitely one of the more attractive women I had seen in a while, and I found myself wondering what had happened to make her so cold and harsh.

She came back and set the glass down in front of me, and must have seen me watching her. "Are you stalking me now?" she demanded, holding out her hand for the money I now owed her.

I frowned up at her. "Stalking you? I don't even know your name." I dropped three gold coins in her hand and turned my attention to my drink. Without even thinking, I fished the picture of myself and my wife out of my pocket and dropped it down on the table in front of me. After staring at the photo for a moment, I downed the entire glass in one swallow.

"How much is a bottle?" I demanded.

"One thousand gold," she answered cautiously, her eyes fixed on the photo I had been looking at.

Nineteen hundred gold in coins found themselves clattering on the table. "I'll take a bottle and another glass," I ordered.

"You gave me three hundred extra-"

I threw a glare at her that said, "I know how much I gave you." For the first time, she flashed me a small smile that lit up her green eyes as she pocketed the tip and hurried away to get my drinks.

A half full glass of beer plopped down in front of me, and I looked up to see Harris sitting down across the table. "It's been a while since we've seen you," he commented in his deep voice. "Welcome back, John."

"It's Jack now."

Harris took a long drink of his beer before nodding. "Okay, Jack it is. How long has it been since I've seen you? I think the last time I got to talk to you was about three and a half, four years back wasn't it? At your wife's fu—"

"Yeah." I had to cut him off. Erin's funeral has always been a sore topic for me.

Harris focused on his beer during the awkward silence, but the young man with the bandana came over and sat down next to him. "My name's Kai," he introduced himself. The bags under his eyes and stress lines in his skin caught my attention, warning me that even at this young age Kai drank far more than was healthy. His voice cracked. "I work at the vineyard for Master Gotz over there." He jerked his thumb towards the big man sitting in the corner and offered his hand to shake.

I ignored him and focused on the waitress, who was heading back in my direction, but the mailman/town constable spoke up for me. "This is Jack. He's the guy taking over the farm."

Kai nodded knowingly. "Ah, so you're the old man's grandson. It was a loss for everyone when he died." The waitress started setting the full glass and the bottle in front of me. "You know, drunkenness is sort of frowned upon around here."

I shot him a withering glare. "I don't need a lecture on this town's policies from you," I snapped, swallowing half of the glass of whiskey. I knew from talking to Grandpa that this Kai fellow was at least two years younger than me. "I was visiting this town before you were even born. Anyways, I'm not here to get drunk. If I was, I would have ordered the bottle first." I downed the rest of the glass of alcohol and stood up abruptly, grabbing the full bottle and my jacket off of the chair next to where I had been sitting. "Harris," I nodded my head at the man to say a goodbye. Out of everyone in the town, Harris and the Mayor were the only ones who knew me. When I had visited Grandpa, I had staid pretty reclusive on the farm, and those two men were the only ones who made a habit of visiting my grandfather on a nearly daily basis. Then, when Erin had died and Grandpa was forced to come to the city to attend the funeral, Harris and the Mayor both went along with him to make sure he would be okay.

As I started through the double doors I could hear the bartender's deep voice behind me. "You might as well head home, now. It's a slow night, and I can handle the rest of it myself."

Walking between buildings on my way back to the path to the farm, I lit up another cigarette. "Wait up," I heard the waitress from the bar call out from behind me. "You left this at your table," she told me, holding the photo out to me.

She wisely didn't comment on my wife, though she was obviously curious after seeing the picture. "Can I bum one of those off of you?" she asked, waving at my cigarette.

I handed one to her and lit a match; I couldn't help but see her shiver in the night air under her vest. "Here," I told her, pulling off my jacket. "Wear it."

She pulled it over her shoulders and gave me another small smile before blowing a cloud of smoke. "Thank you. I live at the vineyard, so do you mind if I walk that far with you?"

I shrugged, and we started walking.

"I'm sorry," she said as we neared the edge of town. "For how rude I was earlier. You were just trying to be nice. I had just gotten in a fight with my father," she explained.

"No problem."

She giggled, a sound that seemed out of place considering the omnipresent bad attitude she seemed to have. "You're not very talkative right now, are you? You remind me of me." She was quiet for another few moments as we walked. "By the way, was that your daughter earlier?"

"Yeah."

"In the picture, was that her—"

"Don't ask," I cut her off. While part of me wanted to explain my harsh words to this woman, the other part of me raged against the need to talk about Erin. The latter won.

We eventually came up on the spot where the path split to head either to the vineyard, or my farm and Green Ranch. "You can get the jacket back to me tomorrow or something," I told the young brunette woman. "Don't sweat it." I turned to head down to my farm.

"It's Karen." Once again, her voice called me to a halt.

"What?"

She smiled at me and hugged the jacket closed. "My name is Karen. It was nice to meet you, Jack."


	3. Chapter 3

The day after my first trip to the bar, Ann came over at around noon with a black colored colt. Cliff and I were breaking our backs trying to yank up weeds, but Kairi was having the time of her life rolling around in the dirt with a hyperactive Spatz.

"This is the colt?" I asked, wiping the sweat out of my eyes with my shirt then dropping the garment back on the ground. The horse stood almost as tall as Ann at the shoulder, and looked to be nearly the size of a full grown animal; it had a saddle strapped around it's middle Ann was leading it by using reins.

"Yeah," Ann chirped. "He's still got a season's worth of growing left to do. Dad decided to send some tack with him, in the hopes that you'll race him in the local horse races after he's done growing."

"That shouldn't be a problem," I told her as she handed me the reins. "Has he been broken?"

Ann nodded happily. "I broke him. He'll be perfectly safe for you to ride when he's all grown up."

Kairi ran up behind me, hiding behind my legs as she took her first look at a live horse. I picked her up, holding her up to the horse's snout. "It's okay," I told her. I reached out and ran one hand up and down the colt's snout, eliciting a pleased flicker from his ears. Kairi slowly reached out to touch the horse, sticking her small hand into its nostril; the horse snorted, and my little dark-haired daughter giggled.

"The horsey's funny," she managed between giggles.

I sat the three year old girl down in the saddle then looked across the horse's back. "Could you do me a favor, Ann?" I asked. She threw me a big, happy grin and pulled herself up on to the horse's back. With one arm around Kairi, Ann made the colt start walking.

Cliff was happy for the break, and we watched the young woman and the little girl ride around the farm amid shouts of "Look at me, Daddy!" and high pitched shrieks of joy. After a while, Ann brought the colt to a stop in front of us and Kairi, as soon as her feet hit the ground, patted the colt on the leg and started chasing Spatz again.

"What do you think you'll call him?" Ann asked as Cliff helped her down.

I shrugged. "I'm not sure. Do you have any ideas, Cliff?"

The brown haired man looked the animal over. "When I was a kid, my neighbors had a horse. He was huge, strong, but gentle enough that he never even stepped on a butterfly. If I remember right, they named him Adonis."

"Works for me," I smiled. "Does it sound good to you, Ann? Adonis."

The redhead clapped her hands. "That's such a nice name! Now, you better take good care of him. You can just let him roam on the farm because he won't leave, and he'll feed himself on the weeds and drink out of the pond. Just make sure that you brush him and talk to him every day." She grabbed the reins again and started to walk him over to the tool shed. "I'll put the tack away in the shed," she hollered, "so when he's ready to ride it'll be there for you."

Cliff and I started back to work pulling weeds when Ann came over to stand next to us. "So, how was the bar last night?" she asked.

"Not very busy."

"That's not what I meant," she told me crossly.

I looked up at her as I yanked a handful of weeds out of the ground. "What do you want me to say? I downed a couple of glasses and made it home just fine. The bar was fine."

Cliff looked over at the young women with curiosity all over his face. "What are you getting at?"

Ann smiled at me slyly. "Someone was very impressed by Jack yesterday," she informed him. "Someone who doesn't warm up to—"

"Jack? Are you busy?" Karen's voice rang out from down the path.

My farmhand looked at me incredulously. "You got _her_ to warm up to you?" he demanded. "Man, I'm related to her and she's still mean to me sometimes."

"He's over here, Karen," Ann hollered at her friend.

"Related?" I asked.

The brown haired man shrugged and tossed a handful of weeds onto the growing pile. "She's my cousin. My Aunt and Uncle own the vineyard."

I couldn't quite describe the way Karen looked at me when she walked up. Standing there shirtless and covered in sweat, her look made me feel like I was a Popsicle on a hot day or something like that. "What?"

"I just wanted to return your jacket," she told me, tucking a wayward strand of hair back behind her ear. She held the black leather coat out. "You're a lifesaver, thank you."

"You want to meet the rest of my family?" I asked, taking the coat and hanging it over a railing of the fence that surrounded my croplands and pasture. I turned and belted out a sharp whistle that was promptly answered by a bark. Spatz came running up, a dirt covered Kairi chasing him and giggling. "This is Spatz, and my daughter Kairi."

"He's not too bright, is he," Karen stated, watching as Spatz stepped on one of his ears and plowed face first into the dirt. Kairi shrieked and practically jumped on the downed dog, who responded by licking her face hard enough to wipe most of the dirt off it.

I shook my head and bent to pick up my shirt. "Kairi, come here," I called. When she stood in front of me, I used my shirt to wipe the rest of the dirt off of her face; she just grinned up at me. Picking her up in my arms I said, "You met Ann, right? This is her friend, Miss Karen."

All of a sudden shy, Kairi held one hand up in front of her mouth and gave a tiny wave with the other. I rolled my eyes and set her back down on the ground; as soon as her little boots touched the dirt, she was running at the dog to deliver another flying tackle.

"Anyways, I've got to go," Karen turned to leave.

"Say, Karen, why don't you come over here tonight for some drinks?" Cliff suggested. "I've got a little leftover money, so I can go to the bar and pick something up. And I'll tell Duke you'll be over here, not working."

"Whatever." She tossed the word over her shoulder, not pausing as she left my farm.

I looked at Cliff for a moment, and then turned my head. "Kairi, it's time for lunch!" As a group, we all headed for the house and the sandwiches Ann and Cliff had made the night before.

We all sat down around the table in the kitchen and started to eat. "How much do you think we can plant in the extra space we've cleared?" I asked Cliff.

He thought for a moment. "Four or five bags of seeds," he answered.

"We've got a little over two thousand gold in the farm bank account," I told him, pulling out a bag full of coins and rattling it. "Think you can make a trip into town when we're done? Pick up a thousand gold worth of cabbage seeds? We'll plant them and water them this afternoon."

Cliff shook his head with a grin. "Three days on the farm, and you'll already have fifteen sacks worth of seeds planted."

I toasted him with a glass of water, ducking a piece of bread crust that Kairi had launched. "I just hope that everything I've heard about how fast and how big the vegetables from here grow is true," I said before downing the liquid.

At the end of the day, we had more than planted and watered the cabbage seeds. We had done more weeding, and created three full wheelbarrow loads of gravel out of the rocks littering the property. Ann had gone home not too long after lunch was over, and Cliff headed over to Greene Ranch to have dinner with her. That left Kairi and I alone at the house for the afternoon.

Shortly after I put Kairi to bed and got her to sleep with a bedtime story, Cliff and Ann showed back up. My hired help pulled out a bottle of wine and started filling glasses. "Is Karen coming over?" Ann asked.

Cliff nodded. "She should be. When I picked up the wine, I told Duke what was happening. He didn't have a problem with it, but Karen probably knew he wouldn't. She'll be here."

No sooner had he said that than there was a knock on the door. Ann opened it to reveal her friend, who in turn flopped down in one of the two lounge chairs in my living room. I took the other, leaving the loveseat for Cliff and Ann, who were passing out the glasses of wine. While Ann and Cliff held a lively discussion on what they thought we should do with the farm, I simply leaned back in my chair and stared expressionless at the ceiling. I didn't even bother looking down when I was taking drinks out of my wine glass. Karen, I could see out of the corner of my eye, was systematically looking over the pictures on the walls and mantle.

Ann, I quickly discovered, had absolutely no alcohol tolerance. As soon as she finished her first glass of wine, her face flushed and her speech started to slur. Cliff helped her up off of the couch and out the door, stammering about taking her home. Karen silently got up and followed him out after putting her glass in the sink in the kitchen. I opened my bottle of whisky. Don't get me wrong: I'm not a drunk. I have Kairi, and for her sake I can't get drunk. On the other hand, I do drink just enough to get a slight buzz and be able to forget my ever-present depression without having to worry about a hangover.

The next morning, I was shocked when I looked out at the vegetables we had planted. The turnips already seemed to be nearly fully grown, and the potatoes were starting to sprout leaves. Cliff and I made it through watering the crops and settled down to do some more weeding. We figured that if we spend the entire day pulling weeds, we should have the rest of the field cleared. When we hit the day's end, we did.

My fourth day on the farm brought another shock: the five bags of turnips we had planted were ready for harvest. It didn't take long to get them all into the shipping bin; after harvesting, I sent Cliff back into town to spend our last thousand gold on another five bags of cabbage seeds.

Since it was Sunday, and we'd worked like dogs for the last four days, as soon as the new seeds were planted and watered we stopped working. Cliff hurried away to the mountain to spend some time hunting with Cain, and Kairi and I got dressed in swimming clothes to head to the beach. By noon, we were down at the empty beach splashing in the surf. When the three year old got tired of the water, she started digging in the sand along with two boys and a girl who were older than she was. I remembered Ann introducing them as Kent, Stu, and May.

I leaned back against the cliff wall and lit a cigarette, stashing the pack back away inside the bundle of towels I had brought for when we finished here. Within five minutes of my sitting down, Spatz came running and barking down the pathway from the house. True to his nature, he plowed straight through the pile of sand that Kairi had made; he yelped when she tried to grab his tail then barked taunts at her when she and the other kids started to chase him around the sand.

"Are those two always that busy?" Karen's voice startled me from my oceanic daydreams. I hadn't even noticed her following Spatz onto the beach.

"Pretty much," I answered.

She sat down next to me, hugging her knees to her chest and watching Kairi and the dog play. For some reason, I was having a hard time taking my eyes off her. Her slim, hourglass figure was clad only in a two piece swimsuit with a towel around her waist, and that image was beginning to dominate my mind. "So, I talked to Ann this morning," she began. I pulled another cigarette out and lit it, offering her one. Karen shook her head. "She told me about your wife." I didn't say anything; instead, I blew some smoke rings. "I'm sorry," she finished.

I shrugged. "Not your fault. So, you're Cliff's cousin?" I asked, trying to turn the conversation in another direction.

"Yep. You know," she told me with a sad smile, "Cliff was going to show me around the city. But after your grandpa helped us get the vineyard back to what it was, all of my interest in leaving just disappeared. Even though I still live with my parents, my desire to leave just disappeared."

The look of this gorgeous young woman in a bathing suit eventually started taking its toll on me, so, after a half an hour of chit chat I decided to do something about it. And the something that I did was walk down the dock and jump into the cool ocean water. I held my head underwater for a couple of extra seconds, letting the cool temperature settle my body down before surfacing. When I broke the surface there was Karen, treading water in front of me and looking into my eyes.

If I thought the sight of her in a swimsuit was attention worthy, I had to admit it was nothing compared to seeing her in said swimsuit and _wet_. Slowly, my gaze made its way up from the blurred sight of her chest to get lost in her eyes. My peripheral vision caught sight of the droplets of water making their course down her long, brown hair, then I noticed the little drops of water that were traveling down her shoulders and neck towards the ocean.

Ever so slowly, we moved towards each other. Really, I don't think either of us noticed how close we were getting until we were crushing our mouths together. I growled into our kiss, pushing her back up against one of the dock's pilings as her legs tightened around my waist.

"What about—" I panted when our lips separated. I couldn't get any more words out before moving my lips down to where her neck joined her shoulders.

"They're at the other end of the beach," she gasped back, giving a small moan as I pulled the straps of her top down.

An image of my dead wife suddenly popped into my brain, stopping my movements and prompting me to bang my head on the piling we were leaning against. "I can't do this," I groaned. "I just can't."

When I pulled my head back to look at her face, Karen's green eyes seemed to be on fire. "Want to bet?" she asked heatedly. One of her hands gripped the back of my neck to support her, but the other began to make its way down my chest and abs. She leaned in to nibble at my ear, and the feeling of her pressing her chest against me drove all thought from my brain.

"It is a lot nicer here than in the city," I murmured, lying on my back on my beach towel with a cigarette between my lips. "No traffic, you don't have to worry about getting mugged, you don't have to constantly keep an eye on the people around your kid . . . This place has a lot going for it."

"True, true," Cliff agreed from a couple of feet away. Ann, I knew, was half laying on him as they sunbathed. The two of them had come down to the beach only a handful of minutes after Karen and I had pulled ourselves out of the water, flushed and tired. Now, the aforementioned brunette was lying down on the opposite side of Cliff and Ann from me. "Although anything you need is at your fingertips in the city."

Ann snorted. "What does the city have that you can't find here?" She demanded drowsily.

"Lots of stores," Karen commented. "Concerts, movie theaters, public transportation, lots of people, places to live where you don't have to stay with your parents . . ."

"Public parks and zoos," Ann admitted. "And amusement parks with lots of rides!" She giggled. "Those are good, even though we're supposed to be too old for them."

"Misery," Cliff suggested. "The most miserable I have ever been was when I was living in Carston Mills. You should try supporting yourself working only a fast food job."

We were all silent for a moment, contemplating the clouds that were cruising overhead. "Jack? Can you think of anything that you could find in Carston Mills that you can't find here?" Ann asked, referring to the nearby city that Cliff and I had come from to get to Flowerbud.

I took a long drag on my cigarette before responding. "Pain," I commented. "Find yourself in-laws who didn't like you from the beginning and blame you for the death of their child, and try to live around that." That was true to my style. Whenever I sit around and start thinking, it usually means I'm not going to be happy. Put anyone around me, and I can usually bring down anyone's good mood at that point.

After my little speech, all four of us fell asleep as the shadow of the cliff bordering the beach began to cover us, saving us all from getting sunburned. We dozed throughout the late afternoon, finally waking up when the air started to get chilly and Kairi and Spatz decided it was time to leave.

Lying in my bed and staring at the ceiling, my stomach started to knot. My heart was screaming that I had betrayed Erin today, and it was tearing me apart. I knew that my head was trying to get in an argument on my behalf, but the feeling of being a traitor drowned it out.

I could really start to like this girl, Karen, I knew. She seemed to be reaching out for someone who could understand a semblance of whatever pain it was that shaped her attitude, and deep down I knew I could do something to help. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that I could feel myself falling for her _because_ I could understand how she felt, but I was torn between doing that and betraying the memory of the woman who had been a soul mate to me, or staying single and raising Kairi on my own. Without any help from anyone.

With that dilemma twisting my brain into knots, I didn't get any sleep that night.


	4. Chapter 4

Because I couldn't sleep, I ended up getting out of bed a lot earlier than normal. To my deprived eyes, even the limited amount of sunlight from the dawn was excruciating, so I dug through my bedside table to find a pair of dark sunglasses. Wearing them and my cap, I fixed myself a cup of coffee and sat out on one of the old chairs that Grandpa had put out on the porch to think.

I was on my fifth cup of coffee and sixth or seventh cigarette when Cliff came out to sit with me carrying his own cup of java. "Trouble sleeping?" he asked. My answer was a grunt. "Anything you want to talk about?"

"No."

He took a long drink of coffee before continuing. "Well, I'm going to put my powers of deduction to the test to figure this out. What happened yesterday that was unusual?"

I had almost opened my mouth to snap at him before I realized that he was talking to himself. "We only worked half of a day," he mused, "but that's no reason for a sleepless night. You spent part of the day alone, but that's nothing new to you. Then you spent the rest of the day on the beach with me, Ann, and Karen."

Cliff snapped his fingers. "I remember now. When Ann and I got down to where you were, you and Karen had obviously been swimming. Anything happen I should know about?" he asked, arching an eyebrow.

Tossing the remnants of my coffee over the railing, I set the cup down and headed for the plants. I wasn't about to tell him I had had sex with his cousin in the water at the beach, although I could see that he had already figured that something similar to that had happened.

The days progressed, and it seemed that no matter how much nicotine or caffeine I got into my system, the light still hurt and my head still pounded from the lack of sleep that I couldn't seem to get over. I was lucky, now, to get more than two to four hours of sleep a night, and my dilemma over Karen wasn't helped by how often she was over at the farm our around me. Her cousin and her best friend, it seemed, were intent on getting the two of us hooked up.

I gave into my desire for her on more than one occasion as time flowed past, but every time I did resulted in more sleepless nights as my mind warred with the guilt I felt. It was as though a constant war was being waged inside of me, but I didn't know who I wanted to win.

Halfway through the fall season, I got up out of bed after another night without sleep. I went about my now natural routine of digging out sunglasses and making coffee before my attention was caught by the calendar in the refrigerator. That initiated a bout of cursing that lasted until lunch.

"What's his problem?" Ann demanded of Cliff, both of whom were sitting on the far side of the porch from me when I finally lapsed into silence.

"I don't know," he shrugged. "What's your problem, Jack?" he asked.

I fixed him with a sour look and blew a cloud of smoke over towards the barn. "I've got to go into the city," I snapped. This time of year always put me in a foul mood. "I'll be heading out this afternoon when the ferry gets here, and I'll be back sometime before dinner tomorrow."

Ann clapped her hands happily, somehow not affected by the foul mood I was in. "Cliff'll have to stay here to watch the farm, but you should take Karen with you when you and your daughter leave," she chirped. "She's always wanted to see the city."

"Kairi is going to stay here, and I need you two to watch her," I continued, oblivious to what Ann had just said. After putting out my cigarette, I pulled my pouch of gold out of my backpack along with two smaller bags, and counted out a handful of coins. Throwing one bag to Cliff and the other to Ann, I continued. "Cliff, that's your wages for the week. Ann, that's payment for watching Kairi. I need to get ready to leave now, so I'll talk to you guys in a bit."

Ann looked down at her watch. "Crap! The ferry is gonna be here in just under two hours!" She frowned back at me. "But you still didn't tell us what your problem was." Without waiting for an answer, she took off at a run down the path towards town.

Cliff was looking at me with a sad expression on his face that told me that he understood. "Do you need any help?" he asked softly. I shook my head. "Then I'll see about heading over to Green Ranch and picking up those two chickens we talked about."

Noticing the change in the use of my voice, Kairi came over to me from playing out in the field and tugged on my pants. "What's happening?" she demanded.

I picked her up, then sat down and set her on my knee. "I've got to go for a while," I explained. With her looking up at me expectantly with her dark brown eyes and nearly black hair, I felt like I had moved back in time to when my wife and I had been kids, and it made my chest constrict.

Her eyes lit up. "Presents?" she asked hopefully.

Tears were welling up in my eyes, but I couldn't suppress a chuckle. "Of course," I told her softly, leaning in to kiss her on the forehead before putting her back down on the deck. "Now, go play with Spatz. I've got to get ready to go."

Packing took up most of the time I had left, and what little I had to spare was spent saying goodbye to Kairi. When I got down to the beach and the waiting ferry, I found Ann and Karen waiting for me, the quieter of the two with a small duffel bag. Remembering Ann had told me she was going to do, I sighed. "The only sightseeing there's going to be will be during a short taxi ride and a stop at the city shopping mall," I warned Karen, throwing a glare at Ann. This was one time when I would have preferred to make the trip alone. "And I don't plan on staying at the mall for very long."

Karen gave me a quiet nod, actually dropping her typical attitude and managing to look meek. Based on how well I knew her, I could tell that she was sincerely sorry for putting me in a position where I felt pressured to bring her along (even if she wouldn't show it), and I could bet that she would give Ann an earful when we got back. Ann just laughed at the look I gave her. "Have fun!" she waved, already heading back to my farm.

The ferry ride passed with no conversation between me and my surprise guest. And that's also how the cab ride to the shopping mall passed. At the mall, it was a slightly different matter. I relented on my bad attitude long enough to do a small amount of shopping with Karen for some things she had been looking for before turning around and buying some gifts and a couple of cards for Kairi. From the mall, it was a short cab ride past a half dozen apartment buildings into the suburbs, then past a liquor store and graveyard to my father's house. As I was paying the cabbie, the rain started to pound down, prompting me to zip up my leather jacket and pull my hat down tighter onto my head. I had to smirk at the circumstances, though. Even with a darkened sky, I still had to wear my sunglasses to cut down on the headache giving light.

With my hands full of bags, I marched up the walkway to the door to my father's house and rang the doorbell. "I was wondering when you would show up," were my father's first words when he opened the door and saw me. On a face that habitually wore a scowl was now a look of sadness. My father took several of the bags out of my hands and led the way into the house, setting them down in the living room before sitting down.

I jerked my thumb towards Karen. "She needs a place to stay for the night. Maybe you can show her some stuff about the city while I'm gone." I turned and headed back towards the door before remembering the second card I had bought for Kairi; I pulled it out of my pocket and tossed it to my father. "I got you a card to sign for your granddaughter, since you don't typically remember," I bit out caustically. "I'll make sure she gets it."

Karen's confused gaze followed me as I walked back through the door and out into the rain, pausing only long enough to light a cigarette while underneath the roof over my father's porch. "You'll have to forgive him," I could hear my father say sadly before the door closed behind me. "He'll get like this sometimes."

While the rain pounded down around me, I cleared my mind of all thought and headed for a bar that I knew was just a couple of blocks away. I spent a handful of minutes chatting with the owner, an old friend of mine, before I managed to get slobbering drunk. Because he understood my situation, my friend drug me back into the back room and up onto a cot after I passed out, then fell asleep sitting up in a corner. I woke up before he did with the migraine-type headache typical of a hangover, and left after writing him a note to say thanks; I left a small bag of gold coins with the letter.

It was still raining outside, but since it was brighter than it had been the night before and I was hung-over, I was extremely thankful for the sunglasses I was wearing. I slowly walked past my father's house again, and made my way up the street to the cemetery. At the gates, I handed over enough gold to pay for two dozen roses, a vase, and a candle before heading into the cemetery proper.

I had been there often enough that I knew exactly where to go without having to think about it. Eventually, I found myself facing a large tombstone with the flowers and candle in hand.

Erin Taylor

1979-2001

A Daughter

A Wife

A Mother

I dropped down to my knees, somehow managing to set the vase full of roses gently on the ground. After pulling the old candle out of its holder, I put in the new one and lit it before reaching out with a trembling hand to touch the laminated photo of Erin in her wedding dress that I had had inlayed into the tombstone.

"Another year gone by, baby," I murmured, not caring about the tears that I could feel tracking down my face. "It's hard to believe it's been five of them now. I took over Grandpa's farm, but you probably know that since he's up there with you. I've got some new friends who are helping me work it. I don't know how I manage. I don't think I could with out Kairi.

"You should see her," a small smile took over my face now. "She looks just like you did when we were kids. Acts just like you, too. Without her, I can't imagine where I would be."

I tilted my head back to look up at the sky, hardly noticing the raindrops that were now hitting my face as I contemplated the heavens in silence. Time seemed to flow by, and by when I became aware of it, the sun was already reaching high noon. "I've got a problem, sweetheart. I know I told you about what grandpa said, about how there was a girl in Flowerbud Village I would get along with. He was right. But it doesn't feel okay. I don't know how I can move on without you here. I just don't know . . ."

My dialogue was cut short when I felt someone put their hand on my shoulder. With my sunglasses on and the sun where it was, all I could make out was a dark shadow reaching past me. I stood up in a rush and looked down, startled to see Karen hunched over and setting her own handful of roses next to the vase. Reacting to the presence of a person, I could feel my tears dry up almost instantly as my face turned stony to hide what I was feeling. Abruptly, the rain stopped beating down and bright rays of light could be seen poking through the clouds. Now that I had made my little confession to the spirit of my wife, I felt better than I had in quite a while. I couldn't remember ever feeling better than this after visiting her grave.

Karen followed me back to the sidewalk in silence, where I pulled out a pack of cigarettes. After giving her one and sticking one in my mouth, I pulled my lighter back out. "Well," I murmured, "now you know all my dirty little secrets."

"Cliff had already told me why he thought you were coming," she answered. "I came because I wanted to be here if you needed someone." I didn't reply, and she studied me with silent eyes as we made our way back to my father's house.

He had gone out and bought a birthday cake for Kairi, something that he in his rather distanced familial role had never done before, and helped me and Karen pack all of our stuff in the taxi. Karen and I were once again silent on the taxi ride to the ferry, and on the ferry ride back to Flowerbud Village.

No one was waiting for us when we got to the beach, so we slowly made our way to my farm. I had noticed my feelings of guilt lessening more and more with the time I had spent alone with Karen over that day, and when we walked up to the farm we were shyly holding hands. By the time we got to the house, it was already getting dark out.

Even though there were only five people at the house (including Cliff and Ann), Kairi managed to turn her birthday party into a noisy affair. Eventually, I found myself slouching on the loveseat, a glass of wine in one hand and Karen sitting close by my side while we watched Kairi playing with some of the gifts I had bought for her. I was having a hard time believing that the dark haired little girl was five years old already; if I hadn't been able to recall the entirety of her life, I would have doubted anyone who told me she was really that old. Here I was, twenty-six years old and feeling much older because it seemed as though my daughter was growing up too quickly.

As I watched Kairi play and listened to Ann and Cliff bicker with each other, I felt someone poke the earpiece of my sunglasses. "You know," Karen mused as she tugged my sunglasses off, "you look pretty good wearing sunglasses and a hat."

I had to bite back a curse when my glasses came off. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since I had gotten drunk, but the side effects of drinking coupled with my sleep-deprived body had resulted in making me rather physically miserable. As I blinked my eyes to try to get them to adjust to the extremely bright lights in the room, I could hear Ann and Cliff's conversation trail off. "You look like crap, Jack," Cliff commented.

Ann stepped over snatched my hat off of my head before grabbing my chin and jerking my head so that I was looking up at her. She spent a couple of moments studying the pale skin of my face, my bloodshot eyes, and the bags under my eyes before demanding, "What happened to you?"

Karen snorted. "You've seen that look often enough on me to know what he did."

"But _why_ did he do it?" the redhead asked heatedly. "I know you drink because your dad is swearing at you again, or because Kai got drunk and hit you when you got back to the vineyard—"

"Kai was what?" Cliff and I demanded angrily at the same time. Hearing the change in our voices, Kairi got up off the floor and pulled herself onto my lap, sniffling. I made a shushing gesture at my three friends before turning my full attention to my daughter. "Don't cry," I told her softly, wiping the tears away from her eyes with my thumbs. When I picked her up to hug her, she wrapped her short little arms around my neck; now I could see Cliff whispering something to his girlfriend. "It's your birthday, you shouldn't be sad. So, happy birthday sweetheart."

She gripped me tighter and, when she pulled her head back she was wearing a big smile. "Thank you, Daddy," she said, giving me a big kiss on the cheek before climbing down to gather up her toys and head back to her bedroom. Realization dawned on Ann's face, and she clamped her mouth shut before she could say anything else.

This year really was a year of firsts. With the exception of my headache and sore eyes, I felt better now than I ever had after visiting my wife's grave. Here I was with a new life, a new home, and new friends. Everything seemed to be happening like Grandpa had hoped; having a place to start over was changing my entire outlook. In fact, I was bordering on actually feeling happy. This was . . . . new.

Author's Note: Unfortunately, this marks the end of this story. I got this far, but I ran out of inspiration and cannot figure out how to _gradually_ move the story away from this "dark" version and into a "lighter" type. If I do eventually figure out how to manage it, I will write and post the additional chapters. Either as a sequel, or I will change this story from "Complete" to "In Progress."

As a final bit, I would like to extend my thanks to those of you who have told me your opinion. I thank you for what you have said, and I thank you in advance for anything you might say in the future. Your constructive criticism, praise, cutting my ego off at the knees has been very much appreciated. I will look forward to writing for you all again in the future.


End file.
